Agricultural News
Feeding the World Involves Balance of Decreased Waste, Increased Production, High Quality
Tue, 13 Nov 2012 12:55:29 CST
Each year, Americans throw away an average of 242 pounds of food per person. That's about 1400 calories per person per day. That amounts to about 1.3 billion tons of food going to waste each year.
Brad Morgan, formerly a meat science professor at Oklahoma State University and now with Pfizer Animal Health, says that 90 percent of our food waste occurs at the consumer level, either at restaurants or at home. He says that is in comparison to places like sub-Saharan Africa where 90 percent of their food wastage occurs in distribution before it reaches the consumer.
Americans spend about seven percent of their income on food. Cheap food is something Americans take for granted, Morgan says, and it's something he'd like to see changed.
"A lot of it is going to start with a change in our practices at home. My wife and I have actually done a food waste study and it was amazing how many pounds and how many dollars we were actually throwing away just simply because we forgot about them sitting in our refrigerator."
Feeding a projected population of nine to ten billion people by 2050 will require waste reduction, increased production and maintaining the highest standards of quality, Morgan says.
"Do we need technology? Certainly. We have to have technology if we want to compete at the marketplace, we have to have technology. We also have to find the fine balance in using those types of products to make sure that we still produce a product like Certified Angus Beef, for instance. People buy Certified Angus Beef because it tastes like beef. It tastes good. And we have to remember that. It doesn't matter how cheap something is if people don't like the taste of it, they're not going to be as willing to buy it."
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